Tips to help you choose the right hearing protection for your workers

When you’re wondering what kind of ear protection you need to choose for your workforce you might find the huge number of PPE options for your hearing to be bewildering. We’ve got a huge range of hearing protection products for use by people in the workplace and we know how difficult it can be to make sure you’ve got the right hearing protection, so we’ve put together three hearing protection tips for you to choose from.

Hearing Protection Comfort

You have to ensure the hearing protection you supply to your workers is appropriate for the amount of time it’s going to be used for. If you supply hearing protection that’s not comfortable to the wearer you could face the problems of non-compliance, especially if your team are onsite for long periods of time, likewise some hearing protection products can become quickly misshapen over prolonged use or alternatively can become dirty and unusable.

It’s important that you understand how your construction employees are utilising the PPE they have with them on site, as you may be held liable for non-compliance by the HSE should your workers not use items such as hearing protection and where they may be subjected to hazardous levels of noise that could result in damage to their hearing.

Disposable ear plugs will do in many situations, however it’s important to know they won’t fit properly with every employee who could cause them to fall out or be removed to do their ill-fitting.

Hearing protection equipment can also create sound distortions and change the way the wearer perceives sound direction, this can be a disorientating experience and is something that you should cover when training your team for hearing protection use.

Hearing Protection and Other PPE

It’s important when carrying out your risk assessment that you understand how the different items of PPE your workers are using will interact with the hearing protection you choose. For example, your team will probably be wearing hard hats, so over the head ear muffs will not be appropriate, rather you will need to purchase hard hats with ear defenders attached, or with ear defender mounts.

Some hearing protection products will cancel out much of the harmful noises whilst allowing the useful noise, such as conversations and alarms to be heard.

How much does hearing protection cost?

The costs of hearing protection is going to be a factor in all situations and it’s important to understand the cost benefits of choosing the right hearing protection equipment for the job, if you over spec you overspend, if you under spec you risk may leave you open to future compensation claims.

Disposable hearing protection for example may be a relatively cheap solution in the beginning, however if your team are on site for extended periods of time the costs can soon mount up, whilst they are generally adequate and more cost effective than supplying ear defenders for the use of site visitors.

View our full range of hearing protection products online or alternatively, please speak to one of our PPE experts on 01772 786000.